When did Zero become perfect?

I don’t remember how, but a while ago I happened upon blogs, owned by a number of girls all over the world, devoted to getting thin and skinny. I browsed through these pages and almost all entries talk about their everyday struggle for the scale streaks to keep on moving to the left.

I honestly thought it was a big bunch of crap. I mean, I’m guilty, I do have an entire entry about wanting to cast off a bit of my weight, or more than a bit maybe. Or I did make remarks about it in some of my entries. But to commit a whole blog account for just that doesn’t make any sense to me. They have to be downright insane to not do anything else but to obsess on losing pounds every single day.

I do understand there are a lot of blogs dedicated entirely to cooking, or fashion, or photography, or driving (?) even, but this thing’s different. I almost laughed when I saw these stuffs. Almost, because I didn’t. I realized that it is more alarming than funny. I find these girls miserable and it’s sad. These girls’ lives are seriously squandered.

I’m lucky I’m not that crazy. I am never really a fan of women with stick-thin bodies. Oh I hear you all say, “..just because you cannot have it”, I know, I know. Exactly, that’s why. Haha! But really, I never wanted a Runway body. An Underwear body, anyhow, I do prefer. Haha! Please don’t argue when I say Victoria’s Secret models are way hotter than Versace models. I mean, though some VS models do Versace too, they’re more appetizing and healthier I shall say when they do VS, with a little meat here and there. Hmm, sorry about the sidetrack but you do get my point about those pathetic women, right?

Why do I write?

For my hundredth blog entry, I planned to make a list of a hundred reasons why I write. As expected, I could not think of that many reasons. I think I stopped before I even reached number ten. How pathetic that is. But just when I was about to slash this entry out, I stumbled upon this.

And my hundred reasons narrowed down into one.

Why do I write?

Because apparently, my drawing sucks.

Christmas Special

It's one day past Christmas Day. I spent the whole of it swimming in my bed. I didn't even bug myself to jump into a balmy, refreshing shower. Of course I didn’t plan on blurting that one out. The point is, I just waited for that day to be over. And now that it is, it’s just another day that I am likely to forget. Or not, since I didn’t even wash myself up and I looked grubby and grimy all day long.

The Noche Buena, however, was a happy one. Of course, that’s when the gift-giving happens. But I wasn’t at all excited about all the wrapped gifts with my name on them. I was a thousand more thrilled about seeing my family opened my gifts for them. This year, I really took time to shop presents for them. And I gave so much thought on each present. I was deliberating with myself whether to give this or that because I didn’t want to give just for the sake of giving. That’s just not me. So anyway, I was relieved and delighted that everyone liked my gifts. It made everything so worth it. And I’m sure I’ll be doing this every year from now on.

He loves his Barney too much.

He takes it with him wherever he goes now.

Now this one's just too pricey not to like. Haha!

As for myself, well, for the past few years I stopped doing Christmas wishlists. Because, one, I don’t almost always get them. I’d be so lucky if I’d get one or two out of ten. And two, because I stopped seeing Christmas as an excuse to be materialistic and bratty. I’m just too old for that.

This year though, I got the biggest and greatest gift there could possibly be. Well, it’s not only for me but for everyone. My sister’s delivered the most gigantic and unexpected news, to say the least – she’s two-month pregnant with her third child. She said that the Chinese calendar says it would be a baby girl. Or she likes to believe so, and we do too. In case, it would be my very first niece. Oh good Lord, you just don’t know how depressing it is to just look out for toy guns and cars and basketball with the colors blue and black and red. I am just so happy the section for little girls’ toys won’t be restricted anymore and shopping for my pamangkins would be a lot more pleasurable.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

The Hills Rumination

(another late post)

Another rainy day at home means getting stuck in bed, having all the sleep the semester deprived me of, and forcing my lids to open up when they start to feel so heavy for being shut for too long. That’s when boredom starts to disturb me. I like doing nothing. I like staring at nothing. But sometimes, I do it too much that it gets tiring too. And my first option: pirated DVDs of my favourite TV series.

That’s what exactly happened to me yesterday until earlier today. The only difference is, instead of playing DVDs of my most trusted selection of series, I opted to try something else. I had long been meaning to watch The Hills, and yesterday, I was able to buy the first three seasons of it.

At first it could be really boring, monotonous. It even put me to sleep after watching the first few episodes. But after waking up again, I decided to just pick up. And then, it turned out to be interesting, and well, it was good. I mean, I still wouldn’t line it up with Grey’s, OTH, and others, it wouldn’t even fall into my Top 5, but I definitely am buying the next season and I’ll catch up with the happenings.

So anyway, this entry’s not meant to do a review of The Hills, or whatsoever. I just realised something about me while I was watching it.

I thought that I am similar to Lauren in one way particularly – I am in no control of reminding and instructing my friends when it comes to matters of the heart, and I do it overly.

I was not like this then. I was always the one who would tell my friend that despite the guy’s offensiveness, it was okay as long as she was happy with him. And that I was just as happy as she was. And when I said that, a hundred times, I was never pretending; every word I said was pulled out fresh from the bottom of my heart. I was always the first one to defend her when people constantly told her what a fool she was for hurting herself.

But now, a few years later, I turned into someone to oppose friends who become excessively giving, without getting a bit of what they deserve. Whenever a friend comes to me and tells me how stupid she has just been, I tactlessly underscore her being stupid for the wrong person, for the wrong reasons. I heartlessly tell her that doing another act of self-sacrifice will just leave her damaged as a person. I lectured and instruct that I sometimes step out of the line. I become irritating already for giving unsolicited advices.

What caused this change in me? It’s finding true love.

It wasn’t that easy, finding my true love. I stumbled upon a couple of, I don’t know how I should call them now, wrong persons I shall say. In one way or another, I lost fragments of myself. I had a great deal of time misspent. And I also had my share of ridiculous acts of misconstrued love. Despite those, I am intact, I am whole. Because I understood that there was such thing as enough. I was a few steps away from the line, good thing that I was brave enough to refuse to stay unsighted. Otherwise, I would have never seen it, and it could have been difficult to pull myself back.

This is the reason why I sometimes appear all-knowing. I am just willing to see for people who decline to see. My careless talking is ironically a caution for my friends who are almost stepping off the line. I get very scared, because I have seen people who hastily walked past the line and they ended up not having that one thing they thought was worth everything. They ended up being insecure and doubtful. They ended up being the least of what they were then. And I wouldn’t want my friends to be one of them, ever.

Now that I found my one true love, I speak with authority. Not because I am arrogant or because I fail to understand. But because I have finally known how exactly every woman is supposed to be treated, and what exactly she deserves.

I wish writing this would make me feel a little better.

Having new friends is good. But not having been able to keep the old ones is, I don’t know, how do I even put it? Unacceptable. Perhaps.

I could not even count and name all the friends I had for the whole twenty years of my life. You can tell, I had plenty of them. But how many among them have I been keeping in touch with? If keeping in touch is exchanging a few text messages once in a couple of weeks, or not forgetting to send birthday greetings on Friendster, then I guess I am keeping in touch. But if it means taking a minute to call and check how they are doing every once in a while, or if it means having to actually free myself to run to their places and personally greet them on their birthdays, then go ahead and curse me. I think I am keeping in touch with nobody. I guess that makes me the least perfect friend, not even a good friend. Give me something not worse than a bad friend, but less than a good friend. I fall somewhere in between that. If you probably ask one of my good old friends on how much of a friend I am, she would probably tell you, ‘sakto lang’. God, ‘sakto lang’ is never good, right? It feels so awful but it’s no one else’s fault, just mine.

A friend of mine is currently going through one of the worsts you could imagine. I didn’t know about it until recently. The thing is, she wasn’t the one who told me and I am not allowed to tell my friend or anyone else that I know something. It’s sad because she is a great friend to me, she is actually one of my best friends and she’s not telling me anything. But the sadder part is, I could not be there for her, help her carry her luggage.

I tried several times to get her to talk to me about what she’s going through, but she said nothing. She pretended to be okay. It hurts because I know that I would understand, and I would support her no matter what, and she could hang on to me all the way. But it hurts more that, through the years, it didn’t seem like I would. Because I stopped being a good friend when we reached the end of something and the start of another thing. We parted ways. I could have left her the assurance that the sudden change would not alter our friendship; that our bodies may have gone so far away from each other but my presence would always be felt. I could have. But I didn’t.

Everyday, I think about her. Everyday, I think about how I could have made her feel much better. If only I kept in touch. If only I bothered to check on her. If only I have been a good friend, the best friend that I used to be.

I don’t want to make the same mistake again. I have such great friends and I want to be as great as they already are. I want to be someone they can run to, someone they will call first. Not only through lucky and happy times, but also when the going gets tough.

As to my friend, I wish the ‘better late then never’ applies. To rescuing our friendship. To my being there for you. Just please let me be a friend to you this time. Let me be there for you.

Traffic News

I’ve been running away from writing for weeks now. In my previous entries, I was telling about how much I had wanted to go back to writing, but after a little while, I was nowhere in sight again. I’ve been avoiding writing as if it’s some kind of plague. Not that I lack the time because I actually have plenty of it. It wasn’t also a writer’s block, definitely not. Neither did my appetite for public writing die out.

Maybe, because I was pretty sure that I would just madden myself by filling my entries up with stories about annoying people, things, and what-have-yous; or maybe, I was just stopping myself from further ruminations while I write, because in the end I would just realize what a wasted man I am; or maybe, I was just musing on whether I should go back to livejournal for the one silly reason that I miss those delightful emoticons, or transfer to wordpress cause it breathes some classiness and style for me, or just stay for the my old entries’ sake even if blogspot’s already boring me.

Or maybe, because of all these reasons. Oh, kill me. I am over-analyzing again. Whatever the reason of my sudden, and over again and again halt is, I’m happy that writing this f*cked up entry has somewhat made my day. Talk about writing as therapeutic.

Whether the red light has shut down for good or not, I cannot tell and I cannot promise. But while the green light is brightly flashing, then I wish to be charged of over speeding.

Lesson Learned

(Written on August 21)

Today, I woke up an hour before my 7:30 AM class. I woke up but I didn’t get up. Without having second thoughts, I dozed off again, knowingly skipping class. I skipped class for no reason at all. It was neither body soreness, nor sleep deprivation, and definitely not morning sickness. I just felt like sleeping a little longer.

I know karma comes around, but I didn’t know it could come back to me that fast. Just a couple of hours later, I found out that our professor gave a quiz. I didn’t feel too bad about it though. I might get a zero even if I was there. What really shook me was the dream I had when I chose to sleep instead. It was nightmare!

I was eyebrowless because somebody shaved my eyebrows while I was sleeping! That dream stirred me up. I woke up in horror and looked at the mirror near me. It was really funny, but creepy too.

This is how I would look like if I was eyebrowless. Ha! Ha! Ooooooogly!

This should serve me a lesson. Now, I promise to never miss out on class just to sleep. I might lose my two front teeth the next time. Tsk.

Exactly

This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing. On Chesil Beach, he could have called out to FLorence, he could have gone after her. He did not know, or would not have cared to know, that as she ran away from him, certain in distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or more hopelessly, and that the sound of his voice would have been a delivernace, and she would have turned back. Instead, he stood in cold and righteous silence in the summer's dusk, watching her hurry along the shore, the sound of her difficult progress lost to the breaking of small waves, until she was a blurred, receding point against the immense straight road of shingle gleaming in the pallid light.

-On Chesil Beach

Ian McEwan says it all.

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Just as good (this good) as the Kite Runner. It talks about the cruelties of war to the women of Afghanistan.

Hosseini writes in a way that triggers empathy from the readers. You would not help but feel terror and detestation because of what they do to the Afghan women. He vividly describes how, if you are a woman who lived in Afghanistan, it would be much better to be lifeless than live in a pitiless world.

He reveals the hell that these women had lived in by narrating the two tales of two women, Mariam and Laila, and how their lives intersect. Mariam and Laila are two different women, yet both experienced how the world in war could be so unkind.

This is very carefully-made, I shall say. Unlike the first book, this has no unnecessary coincidences. Just factual and straight.

Read it! Read it!

Lifetime Warrantee

While walking on the way to the dorm with Bene one late afternoon, we harked back to the days, err, nights actually, when saying goodnight was the most dreadful time of the day.

I remember we would see each other after our classes, eat together somewhere I had not tried the food yet, walk around the park, and all these while talking non-stop. We would do these without feeling even a shred of drowsiness and weariness. But of course, we couldn’t sleep in the streets together so we would also need to get home and call it a night.

He would bring me to the dorm, but when we would get close to it, when we could already see the lights, we would slow down, both of us wishing that time would stop. And when we would reach the gates of the dorm, we would bargain and ask for a little longer time together. We would sit alongside the streets, gazing at the moon, and seeing patterns of the stars with our hands clamped and my head on his shoulder. We would stay like this for a couple more minutes before parting ways (for a night) and saying our goodnights. Still, unwillingly.

After two years, the scene isn’t that picture perfect anymore. No more sitting on the streets, no more contemplating on the beauty of the universe. There are still the reluctant goodnights, but nevertheless, we no longer welcome the dawn outside the hushed and silent streets.

The scene may have changed but it doesn’t mean that we’ve gotten ahead of the can’t-get-enough-of-you stage. No, definitely not. It’s just that, we have gained the assurance that every tomorrow-morning, it will still be us. Nothing will change, well, only better. We are guaranteed that we will only love each other more, every waking day.

You see, letting a moon pass isn’t that bad. Because there are still many moons for us to see. Missing on the stars isn’t bad, even. Because for the rest of the nights of our lives, we would be lying under the same stars and seeing the same patterns.

Fieldtrips, Anyone?

Fieldtrips are my happiest memories of gradeschool. I was such a happy grade-schooler whenever there were fieldtrips. I would always have my own countdown before the big day and the very night before it was one sleepless night. I was too excited picturing the places we would see. And I was scared that I wouldn’t wake up and the bus would leave me.

I never skipped one, I remember. And I hated going with chaperons. Good thing, my parents were too busy then to make a living. I would buy a bunch of baon but soon go home with almost half of it untouched. During the first part of my grade school, I wanted to occupy any seat in front. But later on, when I was inseparable with my friends, we would have a sit at the back of the bus. Also, I bought my own camera just so I could use it on a field trip when I was in Grade 5.

My favourite places to see were recreation parks and resorts. We had a trip to Enchanted Kingdom twice, to Splash Island, and to Crystal Spring (which I think is deserted now). I didn’t like watching plays then; it was hard to ponder on them when you see a lot of things you were not used to seeing. And I hated museums. I didn’t like looking at artifacts, and I found it stupid whenever we were supposed to fall in line to see them. Nonetheless, I particularly liked the Wax Museum, which was really cool.

In high school, on the other hand, we didn’t have a lot of them. Fieldtrips were once in a blue moon and they were rather called educational trips. The school didn’t really entertain stuffs that are non-academic. Whatever. But even if our hardly-any trips were foolish and the least amusing, I would kill just to join in.

Now in college, fieldtrips, for me, no longer spell f-u-n. They are such a total waste of time and money. I missed on that Ilocos trip, and I won’t care to join the Banahaw trip, and still, I wouldn’t feel defeated at all. And I wouldn’t envy my classmates even if they would say how fun it was. God, would it be fun to have a long drive without even having someone to talk to? Well, someone you like, for that matter. Would it be fun to stroll around museums alone while keeping all your stupid thoughts all by yourself? And now, it isn’t that easy to find friends in people you see three hours a week, that is, if you always show up in your classes. So I guess, more than time and cash, fieldtrips are all about the company.

Family Man

I should be studying for my unpredictable long exam, but I’m here instead – in front of my shambolic laptop, doing something that could wait. My neurons are probably rejoicing and relishing the long, peaceful hours.

I was trying to concentrate on macroeconomic indicators and budget deficit, really. But I just couldn’t snub my excitement on writing this entry. I keep on thinking about my professor who will be, by the way, giving this unpredictable exam tomorrow. Oh God, exams in economics can be so obscure and complicated. So anyway, yes, I am thinking about him, of course, not in a malicious kind of way. I am thinking about how much I do respect and admire him. Again, not in an indecent kind of way. It’s not even a petty crush, no, not something like that. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just plain admiration.

What I am so proud of in my three long years here in UP is coming across, in one way or another, professors and instructors who, in one way or another, I have admired and respected. Professors who, despite the low-pay, stay in the university for they find reward in sharing a chunk of their knowledge to their students; professors who can unconsciously make their students develop both terror and liking toward them; and professors who can hypnotize the students from the moment they utter their first word up to the last.

However, the reason why I admire this particular professor is different from what I stated above. Not that he isn’t any of those. He has actually achieved a lot, and he is definitely someone to look up to in his field. Even if he does not follow the syllabus, and even if he has countless side comments when we try to discuss, at the end of the day, I learn more than what is written in the book (which he authored, by the way).

But what really sets him apart from others is his stirring love for his family and how he is so up-front about it. In fact, his side comments would always be about his wife whom he met in the university and whose tax only amounts to his salary, his daughter who he doesn’t see everyday anymore because she studies in med school but who constantly calls, and his younger daughter who sobbed to death to him when she learned that she didn’t pass the UPCAT but whom he consoled until she was put in the waitlist and was admitted eventually. He would talk about how he would make ways so his family could tag along when he would attend seminars and conferences in the different places around the country. He would lecture us on how one should only love one person and should stick with him/her even when misfortune crops up. He would talk about how he and his wife agreed then that one of them would teach in the university so their children’s college education would be guaranteed if they would pass. Imagine paying a beer worth of tuition fee every sem!

He’s like that.

He is, in fact, a bragger. He brags about his feats in the field. He brags about being in UP, and LB for that matter. Lastly, he brags about his family, more than anything else. For this, I know he is worthy of my (and anyone else’s) praise.

Book Review: The Kite Runner

‘For you, a thousand times over.’

This is the best book I have read in a long time. I actually feel kind of stupid and silly for joining the Twilight bandwagon. I should be reading books like this. Curling up with this good kind of book makes me less guilty for staying up late and delaying on working for my requirements.

Khlaed Hosseini is an expert in storytelling. He has the gift of mastering its art, and he uses up his gift well.

He is a sculptor of tales.

“The Kite Runner” is written in the first person, in the character of Amir, an Afghan boy who, when war started in Afghanistan, took off to America with his father but had to come back after a couple of decades for some unsolved business.

Several themes are stirred up to make a very compelling and riveting story. Unparalleled friendship, the charge of disloyalty, a son’s desire for his father’s sympathy, a father’s longing for his son, the price of guilt – all these and more make up the spellbinding twists and turns of the novel.

Another thing that makes him a first-rate author is that he is not only a sculptor of tales, but also a weaver of words. He uses all the right words and puts them all in the right places. It is amazing how I can create in mind what he has written on paper. The depiction, the sketches he gives are vivid and crystal-clear.

This leads to his other trick of making his readers develop an out of the ordinary connection to his characters. The first night I read this, I was almost halfway through. I decided to call it a night and doze off because tears were already rolling down my cheeks. It ‘s heartbreaking. I cried twice that night. Twice. It never happened before. It’s that heartbreaking. Heartbreaking but honest and powerful.

Actually, it took me months to turn the first page over even if The Boyfriend kept on telling me how good this book is. I was quite unsure whether a story set in Afghanistan would be the sort I’d like to read. But it tuned out that I would be very much interested on knowing and studying more of the Afghan culture. It changed my perceptions of Afghan people. It was revealed to me that the Afghans are the victims themselves, and they have long been struggling to win over the power and threats of violence.

It definitely is worthy of its bestseller stamp and Hosseini deserves all the credit having written such a moving and touching book. Now I can finally dig out my DVD and watch the movie. Although I am pretty sure that I will not be as happy with the movie as I am with the book. It would not be as great when some parts, no matter how little, were cut out.

Also, I started reading his second book, “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. According to reviews, this is even better than the Kite Runner. I am yet to discover. But now, I am not as hooked as I was with the kite runner. We’ll see:)